The fact that the government didn't even try to pretend that the decision wasn't made to protect Bristol at the expense of Cardiff - at least they're honest! Westminster doesn't give a crap about Wales.

Cwlcymro wrote:The fact that the government didn't even try to pretend that the decision wasn't made to protect Bristol at the expense of Cardiff - at least they're honest! Westminster doesn't give a crap about Wales.

It doesn't imply that the UK government / Westminster 'doesn't give a crap about Wales' at all.

At the most it lets us say: Westminster doesn't care more about Wales than Bristol. Because devolving the powers to Wales would imply it cared more about Wales than it did about Bristol. It would take the market for aviation and tilt it in favour of Cardiff through govt intervention.

The arguments for devolution have always been dubious. Whether its overcrowing in S. E England (possibly an argument for lower rates of APD outside S. E England, not really devolution to Wales); the 'under-utilisation' of Cardiff Airport (hey, the market is telling us something there). Not to mention the fact that after cancelling the M4 relief road as a result of a "climate emergency", it would be rather interesting to cut APD to increase air traffic: mile for mile, the worst contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

More generally, its a bad idea to devolve taxes where one of the primary responses is to shift taxable activities between jurisdictions. So corporation tax is bad to devolve as companies and especially their profits are highly mobile. Devolving personal income tax is much less bad, as people aren't as mobile and their incomes are taxed based on where they love so they can't "income shift" (between jurisdictions, at least - although 2nd home owners can be a bit of an issue). Property taxes are the best for devolution as property is literally stuck in a jurisdiction - caravans not withstanding!

The issue is that devolving taxes with highly mobile tax bases can lead to downwards pressure on tax rates as jurisdictions compete over that tax base. Tax revenues can then be lower everywhere.

And in the UK we have assymetric devolution. Wales, Scotland and NI have devolution. England does not. And because England is so much bigger than the other countries you could get situations where Wales, Scotland and NI use their devolved powers to undercut England. But for England as a whole, it does not make sense for the UK govt to respond to that competition - because the loss of revenue would be too great.

Being small can sometimes be a benefit in matters of tax - hence the low tax rates of Ireland, Luxembourg, all the British overseas territories. You can gain, but its too costly for the big boys to play the same game.

Some people may say "great" - a winning strategy. But what if you care about people other than yourselves? And what if you look at a wider perspective.

Like it or not, Wales gets about £13 billion a year more public spending than it pays in taxes. England on the other hand lets less spent on it than it pays in taxes (within England the North gets more spent on in than it pays; the South lets less).

My worry is that the English will come to resent Wales (and Scotland and Northern Ireland) if we are constantly using devolved powers to compete and undercut England. And that £13 billion is a much bigger issue than the potential boost from cheaper flights to/from Cardiff.

Also if wales was to bring in a Personal wealth taxes England is only a few minutes down the road, many people will just sell up and move across the border. I'd rather the UK works together and only devolves power on issues that are truly local.

I would also like to endorse RandomComment's view. The last thing we want is competition against airports for APD. A race to the bottom would not only lead to a net reduction for everyone, but also wipe out any environmental incentive.

The sad failure of Thomas Cook is a far larger blow to Bristol Airport than it is to Cardiff.

I don't get your point. How is it CWL's fault if an airline fails? CWL wasn't to blame for the failure of Flybe or Thomas Cook. The fact that passenger numbers at Cardiff continue to rise despite airline failures suggest CWL is very resiliant.